Alan Greenspan: The New Mr. Dollar

The office is ornate and spacious but nothing at all special by Washington standards. Yet the 27-ft. by 16 3/4-ft. second-floor sanctum in the marble- clad Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue has a unique feature: from behind its cluttered wooden desk, the occupant has a breathtaking view of almost every hazard that currently confronts the U.S. and world economies. In the foreground is the distressingly weak dollar, which threatens to push the inflation rate out of control once again. In the middle distance: sluggish levels of U.S. and world growth that could easily tail off into global recession, especially...